Wednesday & Thursday at the Olympics

Beijing is 12 hours ahead of New York right now. That means when it is 8am in Beijing, it is 8pm in New York. So the New York prime time coverage is live. When looking at the schedule, that means that what is scheduled for Thursday morning we watch on Wednesday night. What is scheduled for Friday morning we watch on Thursday night. And so on.

Then, Arizona is three hours behind New York due to Daylight Saving right now. According to the clock. But my prime time coverage starts at 7pm, not 8pm. And somehow that means I’m only 11 hours off of the schedule when I’m watching it. So if something happens at 11:30am on a Thursday, I’m watching it at 10:30 pm on a Wednesday.

Does your head hurt yet?

Wednesday night a huge storm moved through Tucson. My lights flickered several times. The lightning was intense. The thunder was rolling through all night. About 11pm a HUGE wall of water moved through my parking lot. The storm alert on the bottom of the screen was warning people “DON’T DROWN.” I found that funny, but it really isn’t because there are people who do in the flash floods.

I kept hoping that power wouldn’t go out because I didn’t want to miss any of the Olympics. It flickered several times around 8:30. Power didn’t go out for me, but it did for about 15,000 people in Tucson, and as of Thursday night, there were still 4,000-7,000 people without power. The power company went around handing out blocks of ice and cold drinks today as the temperature got near 100 degrees. Oddly, that storm won’t register on our monsoon total this summer because only a trace fell at the airport. That’s a desert storm for you though.

Amanda and I have continued to enjoy the Olympics together. We’ve started commenting more on the actual sports and athletes instead of the commentators, for the most part. Bob still cracks me up. After Phelps‘ win tonight he said “Yeah it’s impressive. Yeah it’s historic. But at this point, it’s also ridiculous.” And then yesterday he was just waving that scorpion on a stick around during that segment.

I am amazed when there is a tie in the swimming. They time those things down to the fraction of a second, and it’s just amazing to me that two people can finish that exact close.

Part of last night we had to figure out where the term pommel horse came from. According to what Amanda found, this is where it came from (I don’t know where she got this information, you’ll have to ask her):

Gymnastics event for men. It uses a padded rectangular apparatus supported by legs and with two pommels (U-shaped handles) on the top. The gymnast performs various swinging and balancing feats, holding himself over the horse by means of the pommels or by grasping the front (neck), centre (saddle), or rear (croup) of the horse. The apparatus stems from a wooden horse used by the Romans to teach mounting and dismounting.

Although I’d like to see a horse stand still for what they do with the pommel.

The gymnastics judges have plants on their table. That’s interesting.

Two big OUCH moments during the men’s all around on Wednesday. I hurt just watching them fall like that. I hope they are okay.

They were talking about the research and improvements in the swim suits this year and there was a British man who explained that they were designed to hold the “wobbly bits” tight. So there’s no fat flapping around. Wobbly is such a fun word and I laughed at how it sounded when he said it with his accent.

Watching medals ceremonies I’ve noticed that other countries don’t put their hands over their hearts or salute or anything like that. Although there is Lochte, who looks more like he’s feeling his spleen than putting his hand over his heart. I love that Phelps still gets emotional, it hasn’t gotten old for him. I think if it ever does get old, that’s when it’s time to stop.

Speaking of getting emotional with the medal, I got emotional watching the medals ceremony for the women’s all around tonight. I think my favorite outfit was the Chinese girl who got bronze. That was pretty with the gold sparkly swirls on it. But for Liukin to win, when her father won 20 years ago, and have him there with her coaching her, what a family legacy. They said her mom doesn’t watch, so as soon as she knew she made sure her mom knew. (Pssst, Amanda, telling me that you understood what the guy with the flowers said, meant he said it in English, kind of gave a bit away. 😉 ) I really liked the music for the bronze medalist’s floor exercise though. That was fun music.

Also, on the quilt. I am happy to report that all of the blue border that was available has been quilted. Yippy! Next is the spools. I needed to roll it a bit first and wasn’t sure how I was going to do that by myself. I can’t hold both corners tight at the same time. So I was very glad that Brett randomly stopped by tonight. We’ll need to work on his c-clamp skills, but he has a good idea of what’s going on. So I got it rolled once.42D

During the prime time coverage tonight I didn’t work on that quilt though. My nephew is due next week. And I want him to go home from the hospital in a quilt I made. So that means I need to make his quilt and get it shipped, fast. Anjuli, you cannot have him till you get a box from me. I was able to cut out and piece the whole top tonight.

Due to the limited space in my apartment, I’ve had to lay out the baby quilt underneath my bedspread on the frames. It makes me smile to see the two like that.

This is going to be one cute baby quilt too. I’ll try to get it basted and start the quilting tomorrow (machine quilting on this one). Hopefully I can get it in the mail on Monday, and I’ll ship it fast.